ComEd to ICC: Smart meter argument not about the money

Commonwealth Edison Co.'s move to put off installing smart meters in homes and businesses for two years is taking a strange turn.

The electric utility has complained that it must delay its smart meter program because of a nearly $100 million annual revenue shortfall caused by state regulators' refusal to see two esoteric rate-setting issues ComEd's way. But, in a weird eleventh-hour switcheroo that emerged last week, it's now telling the Illinois Commerce Commission, which must sign off on the new installation timetable, to ignore its arguments about having too little money to do the job.

In an Oct. 23 letter filed with the ICC, a lawyer for ComEd hinted that requests from parties in the rate proceeding for detailed financial information from the utility, which ComEd evidently doesn't want to provide, had triggered the new stance.

“The utility's finances are not among the standards (governing whether the delayed installation plan complies with state law), and ComEd will not argue that they are,” the letter stated. It went on to acknowledge that ComEd's previous filings with the commission “may have contributed to a misimpression.”

Indeed, just three weeks before, ComEd filed testimony with the commission making numerous references to its money woes in asking for a delay.

The utility stated on Oct. 3: The new smart meter plan “has been developed specifically in response to the need to propose a deployment schedule that reflects the commission's . . . decisions concerning ComEd's available revenues.”

Several months of back-and-forth between ComEd and the ICC, including an Oct. 3 concession by the commission on a key issue that restored some of the revenue ComEd was seeking, have resulted only in more acrimony over how the regulators are enforcing last year's landmark “smart grid” law. That statute attempted to give ComEd relatively certain annual rate hikes in return for a $2.6 billion grid modernization program that would put smart meters in every home and business and improve reliability.

ComEd has challenged the ICC's rate ruling in state court, which Friday rejected the utility's request to put its challenge on a fast track. More important, signs are growing that ComEd intends to ask the Legislature to force the ICC to give it all the revenue it's seeking, according to people familiar with the matter.

Staff of the ICC on Oct. 25 recommended denying ComEd's request for the smart meter delay until 2015 and called on the utility to begin installing meters in the second half of 2013. The staff said ComEd hadn't provided detailed enough financial information to determine whether its shortfall claims were accurate and hadn't seen evidence otherwise that it couldn't obtain financing to get the program started.

Likewise, Karen Lusson, senior assistant in Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office, filed testimony with the ICC calling for more time to consider ComEd's arguments in light of its new stance that its finances aren't at issue.

“It is inconceivable, based on the ComEd application for rehearing and its statements in its October 3rd pre-filed testimony, that a party or staff could have any other impression than that alleged financial concerns were the cause of this rehearing and revised (smart meter deployment) schedule,” she wrote.

In an email, the ComEd spokesman wrote that the utility asked the ICC to update its smart meter installation schedule after the funding issues arose. But now that the utility has filed its new schedule, the only issue for the commission to address is “whether ComEd's revised plan meets the statutory requirements to provide net benefits to customers.”

ICC staff says even the delayed schedule hits that target. But the staff says that ComEd needs to show why it can't start the program next year and that it hasn't yet done that.